Voices of Syrian women in civil resistance

Although
we now hear guns more than peaceful chants in Syria, and while the news of
armed rebellion overshadows discussion of nonviolent resistance, a subtle
everyday survival activism performed by civic groups, especially women, keeps
the movement alive.

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“The
day I left prison, I got invited to attend a memorial service for one of those
who were killed by the regime in Syria. Everyone started chanting my name the
minute I entered the venue. They were thousands, and they treated me like a
hero. It was a moment that I will never forget. I never felt more connected to
my people”.

Rima,
the 40 year old Syrian writer who now lives in exile, didn’t really ask for a
leadership role in the early nonviolent struggle in Syria. Her passion was
always fighting for women’s rights, as well as advocating against honor killing
and corruption. But beginning in March 2011, she found herself among thousands
of other Syrians fighting through social media or on the streets for a bigger
cause - democracy in Syria.

Syrian
women have played an important role in nonviolent protests when the Syrian
uprising began. But as the conflict turned violent, men and their guns came to
dominate the struggle. And with the advent of armed insurgent groups like the
Free Syrian Army and the Syrian Liberation Army, stories of civil resistance in
Syria, like Rima’s story, have been submerged.

Today,
many say that the role of women in the Syrian uprising has diminished as the
struggle has become militarized. Others believe the role of women in struggle
is taking a different shape - an auxiliary role in keeping the resistance
strong. In any case, there is a need to better understand the
challenges which women faced while engaged in nonviolent resistance before the
struggle was steered toward violent insurrection. This reflection can help to
identify ways for the nonviolent resistance to remain a positive influence in
the country.

Image from protests in the Damascus suburb of Douma, April 24, 2011. Flickr/Syriana. Some rights reserved.

Commitment to nonviolent work but no strategy

“We
were around 100 women. We used to fast together during daytime. We sat together
and prayed for the victory of our people”. This story is told by Mona, a wife
and a mother, and also a woman activist from Altall.

It is a well-known belief
among Muslims that prayers will be answered if they are uttered by a fasting Muslim. Mona’s voice shakes when she talks
about these memories. It’s clear that these shared activities created an intimate
connection between those women. Mona
and her group would go out for their daily protest 15 minutes before sunset.
“We would chant around our area. Then, have a meal together. This was our
routine for months, and it gave us courage”. Despite the repressive
environment, this group created an outlet to network, recruit, as well
as organize street gatherings and protests. Women developed their own chants
and slogans and managed to form a unity among resisters in the area. However, the lack of a longer-term
strategy in their nonviolent efforts became evident. In many cases, these women
were wives, mothers, daughters and sisters of the soldiers who volunteered for the
Free Syrian army. Some of their activities were later oriented to supporting the
armed resistance, which may have involuntarily contributed to the weakening of nonviolent
discipline in the struggle against the Assad regime.

Other groups of Syrian women were aware of the
importance of building a fighting strategy based on nonviolent principles, and
they genuinely believed in it. Kinda,
a student from Duma said, “Our revolution started like a baby, and we needed
more time to grow stronger. This will never happen until we have a solid and
unified strategy for our peaceful resistance.” Kinda organized many protests
and strikes at her university. She tried to come up with effective ways of
maintaining nonviolent discipline and not allowing violent resistance to take
over. But her efforts to succeed had to be replicated by hundreds and thousands,
and particularly by the men who were deserting the Syrian army in great
numbers. This did not happen.

Being a woman
in the Syrian struggle

Women activists in Syria were jailed and tortured. Stories
of rape that spread like wildfire were terrifying to most women activists. Despite
this brutality, many women inside Syria continued their fight. But they were also
keen to use precautionary measures to protect themselves, including covering
their faces while in protests so that they could not be identified by security
forces. Nuha, an artist from
Jaramana, organized many protests in her area from the beginning of 2011. Despite
being beaten, she never stopped organizing. She reflects: “Women choose the safest and more effective ways to
do things, and these qualities and skills are very useful in our civil
resistance. Women are the best at organizing - the logistics of setting
up and running field hospitals, arranging blood drives and donations.”

According
to Nuha, women were in many cases the minds behind successful resistance
actions that aimed as much at showing defiance as at limiting chances for
getting injured or killed. She noted that
“when women choose routes for protests, they take into account all elements and
factors, and in many cases, the protests designed by a woman will end up with
no or minimum arrests and no confrontation with the police”.

Maha, a Syrian human rights activists also observed
the advantage of being a woman activist. She said: “in the beginning of the
uprising, I used to drive through the police checkpoints with my western outfit
and short skirt and they never suspected me. They were under the impression
that the only supporters for this movement were the Islamists. The police would
have never suspected a secular woman like me”. This helped Maha to move from one
location to another documenting and reporting human rights violations. Later, she was arrested at the human
rights center where she worked along with many of her colleagues. She was
released the same day and fled the country in late 2012, fearing for her safety.
Her story is a testimony to the changing circumstances for women activists in
Syria over the past two years.

Nonviolent resistance
persists despite brutality

Mai, a woman scout leader from Damascus, was one of
the peaceful resisters who still remains in Syria. She started her actions by gathering together with several
men and women and organizing peaceful protests, using tools like balloons, signboards
and leaflets to attract more people. Mai and her
colleagues believed strongly in the virtue of citizenship, and they
wanted to promote it through legal actions. They applied to the authorities for a permit to organize demonstrations
to challenge the restrictive law on public gatherings. They went through a lot
of bureaucracy and paperwork and finally succeeded and secured the necessary
permissions. However, when they held their peaceful protest in Damascus, they
were immediately attacked by the police even though the demonstrators were
holding the protest permit in their hands.

Despite
violence, we continue reading the stories of “Daryya’s Free Women Group”,
nicknamed the “Spray women”. These women sprayed messages on the walls of their
neighborhoods and towns, aiming to unify residents around nonviolent
resistance. Some of these messages
read, “Remember that we went out first for the rule of law” and “the revolution
passed through here”.

We
also hear about a brave woman who in August 2011 began documenting
the names of people who were killed by the regime in Syria. She searched
systematically for their personal stories, inquired with people about their
hopes and dreams, in a mission to document the sacrifices of ordinary people for
future generations. These examples demonstrate that a repressive environment
and violent reactions to peaceful acts, although creating a formidable challenge,
cannot douse the spirit of women in resistance.

Protecting the movement

Many women activists
in Syria are aware of the enduring damage that the armed conflict is inflicting
on Syrian society. This is why many of them have shifted their energy towards
building a strong civil society rather than just organizing protests. Nuha
was among many women who volunteered for organizations inside Syria. ”We try to
empower civil society and to give it a voice” she says. “I am personally afraid
of the power and money that the radical Islamist groups are acquiring in the
course of this revolution. This radical ideology is very foreign to our society
as a whole, and it’s threatening Syria’s future”.

Many Syrian female activists chose to be involved
in activities that crisscross civil society and politics. Katherine, a lawyer
and a human rights activist is involved in building community organizations
from the bottom up in Syria, which she and several other women activists are
trying to do. Their work focuses on instilling the culture of self-management
of local communities through an informal network of people and institutions.

Although
we now hear guns more than peaceful chants in Syria, and while the news of armed
rebellion overshadows discussion of nonviolent resistance, an everyday survival
activism performed by civic groups, especially women, keeps the movement alive,
and this is done in a much more subtle way than overt protests and
demonstrations.

This article is based
on field research conducted by Rajaa Altalli, senior advisor at the Center for
Civil Society and Democracy in Syria, and Dr. Anne-Marie Codur. who holds a
Ph.D. in Economics and Sustainable Development from Institut d'Etudes
Politiques de Paris and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University

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